Hansen’s Hopkins

Ron Hansen’s Exiles (2009), a fictionalization of the writing of “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” presents a transformation of Gerard Manley Hopkins into “a postmodern fictional proposition.” Hansen’s Hopkins embodies an investigation of otherness that illustrates Derrida’s concept of hospitality while transforming Hopkins “into text.” Hansen’s emulates Hopkins’s innovation through his genre-bending pursuit in creating this fictional version of Hopkins, combining poetry, historical fiction, and literary analysis into a composite text, even at times emulating and incorporating Hopkins’s own poetic language in this new creation.